Anyone who has stood at the top of the podium, knows their story doesn’t start there. It is the countless hours that have been dedicated to the sport. The family and personal sacrifices they have gone through in order to be on top. In motorsports, it is often times the road less traveled that can either result in the top of the podium or at home completely broke.

For Kevin Wiebe, this is certainly the case. The truck that is below, is truly a result of taking the path less traveled. Thanks to some very big help from BD Diesel Performance and the support of other companies Straight To The Maxx still lives and actually is one of the premier West Coast sled pullers.

The 2014 season can truly be looked at as a turning point for Wiebe. He was poised to be a strong contender in his local pulling association (NW Truck Pulls) and the few national NHRDA events that he was planning on attending. In fact, Wiebe was riding high with a victory at the NHRDA season opener at the Auo Club Famoso Raceway.

As the season progressed, he usually found himself around the top of the pack and was having a pretty good season. That was until late May/early June. Wiebe’s father passed away in May. This caused him to miss the premier event in his area (Battle On Badger Road). Then within days of losing his father, his truck caaught on fire. (See the video here and learn more about it here.)

At this point, one can only imagine what was going through the Wiebe family’s mind. The loss of a parent is hard enough, but then a huge financial loss with the truck going up in smoke is just added stress and misery. Fortunately, the truck was still a street legal truck and it was insured.

“The Black Book value of the 2003 3500 Duramax is all the insurance company would have been willing to cover after Kevin hired a lawyer. Kevin would lose the truck though it still had lots of unburned equipment on it, or equipment that could be rebuilt,” explained Brian Roth, Owner of BD Diesel Performance.

This wasn’t the first time the truck had caught on fire. Unfortunately for Wiebe, no one was able to put it out quickly. “I felt the pain for Kevin, he had put his heart and any extra cash into this truck over the years. He had been a good friend and customer to us. I felt that I would want a company to take care of my precious race truck if it would be mine. The honorable thing would be to buy a replacement and build it back up for Kevin. So we did. Our cost to build this for Kevin totals over $50,000,” continued Roth.

“This was the time if ever that Kevin could step up the power level so we called in our friends like Jim and Amy Greenway, they step up and gave him a sweet deal. Though by the time it was running at double the power level it originally was, Kevin put out about as much as we did,” finished Roth.

With the cab of the truck gone, the electric fried and mostly everything forward of the bed in need of attention, BD Diesel Performance stepped up and started to work around the end of June. Their goal was to make the NHRDA World Finals in Ennis, Texas October 3rd and 4^th.

That is a mighty tall order when you consider they were not starting from scratch, but rather a charred truck. They wasted no time at all sending the engine down to Baillie Diesel. They pushed hard and stayed focused in order to completely rebuild the competition engine.

The engine was torn down and hot tanked. Once cleaned, everything was checked for cracks as can happen during a vehicle fire. They were quite lucky, all major components were still good. The cylinders were diamond honed for Mahle Motorsports forged racing pistons. The pistons, were connected to a set of R&R Racing Products rods and bolted to the factory crank that was polished. ARP main studs were used to keep the assembly together. To ensure the balancer stays put, the crank was, also, keyed (this eliminates the factory pin.) A SoCal Diesel balancer was installed in the front, and one of their billet flywheels was mounted to the rear of the engine.

The cylinder heads were sent out to Premier Engine Design. Once there, they ported them and replaced the pressed in injector cups with screwed in cups. The heads, also, received SoCal Diesel upgraded springs and retainers. Operating the valves are the factory rockers but being controlled with a SoCal Diesel cam via their pushrods.

Up top of the engine sits a very large air to water intercooler/intake manifold that features individual runners from Wagler Competition Products. The intercooler is fed by the BD Diesel Performance 2.6 inch turbocharger (per class rules) that is mounted in front of the engine. The turbocharger is driven by the exhaust that is fed through the BD exhaust manifolds that have been turned around and utilize custom tubing fabricated to connect the exhaust manifolds to the turbo. The exhaust exits through a cool square, five inch hood stack from Mertz Performance.

Fueling this beast starts with BD’s high volume fuel pumps that feed the PPE dual CP3s. The CP3s pressurize the fuel and the fuel is injected into the cylinders through the Bosch Motorsports injectors built by S&S Diesel Motorsports. All of this is controlled via EFILive tuned by Tim Hecker.

The engine sends it power through the BD torque converter and a fully built Allison transmission. Then the power is transferred through the factory transfer case and finally to the axles.

Up front, Wiebe did a solid axle swap and is running 4.56 gears from Yukon with one of their lockers, the unit was built by Randy’s Offroad. The axle is controlled by King coilover shocks. In the rear, the axle was assembled by Primo Fabrication and it too is running 4.56 gears and a Yukon locker.

A big part of sled pulling is reading the track and putting the power down to the ground. Wiebe is running 17-inch Fuel Off-Road wheels all around but the front and rear tires are different. Up front, he is running a set of Interco Trxus STS (35×12.5R17) tires. In the back, are four General Tire Grabber AT2 tires (35×12.5R17).

To help keep Wiebe’s mind on the track and not his back, a set of MasterCraft Baja RS seats were installed. Monitoring what is happening under the hood, is an Edge CTS mounted in the dash were the radio was previously. To make sure Wiebe has complete control over everything, six switches were installed in the dash to control everything.

With complete dedication and a clear goal in mind, Straight To The Max hit the dyno September 19^th. The truck made its debut on the 20^th with a 339 foot pull! While Wiebe still has some time to get used to the new truck setup, it certainly has raised the bar on the West Coast.

“We want to say a huge thank you for the following sponsors: BD Diesel Performance,Baillie Diesel Motorsports, North County Lawn Care, Wiebe Construction, Primo Fabrications, Tim Hecker Landscape Supply, Edge Products, Outlaw Diesel Performance,Mertz Performance, Clavicle 3, Premier Engine Design, S&S Diesel Motorsports,” says the Wiebe family.